Silicon particles as trojan horses for potential cancer therapy

Silicon particles as trojan horses for potential cancer therapy

BACKGROUND Porous silicon particles (PSiPs) have been used extensively as drug delivery systems, loaded with chemical species for disease treatment. It is well known from silicon producers that silicon is characterized by a low reduction potential, which in the case of PSiPs promotes explosive oxidation reactions with energy yields exceeding that of trinitrotoluene (TNT). The functionalization ...

Siderophores as “Trojan Horses”: tackling multidrug resistance?

Microbial drug resistance is partly due to hindered diffusion through the membrane of microbial cells and active transport mechanisms. An approach to counter such resistance uses the bacterial iron transport system. Extracellular free iron is scarce in vertebrates, yet essential for microbial growth (Anderson et al., 2012). A mechanism displayed by microbial pathogens to cope with iron scarcity...

Porous Silicon Particles for Imaging and Therapy of Cancer

11 11.1 Introduction The aim of the National Cancer Institute is to eliminate death and suffering from cancer by 2015, by harnessing the power of nanotechnology to provide new tools for diagnosing, imaging and treating cancer. Funded research projects include the design and fabrication of multifunctional nanodevices which promise to change the way we pinpoint cancer and deliver anticancer drugs...

False friends: Phagocytes as Trojan horses in microbial brain infections

Humans are constantly exposed to pathogenic microbes. The first line of cellular host defense is composed of “professional” phagocytes, cells that efficiently recognize pathogens, internalize them, and then marshal an array of antimicrobial mechanisms to destroy them. Nevertheless, successful pathogens evade or survive such attack. A particularly subversive strategy is to manipulate normal phag...

Compiler Implementation Verification and Trojan Horses